One mythic Western landscape, two trail-tough pickups, four restless off-roaders, plenty of cool gear -- the key ingredients for a classic backcountry camping trip.

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ARIZONA

Difficulty: Moderate

Vehicle: 4WD

Length: 700 miles; 4 days/3 nights

Our Southwestern Adventure: This corner of Arizona serves up two diverse landscapes for the price of one getaway. You can slalom through arroyos in scorching cactus desert, then climb up into the cool, mile-high evergreen heights of the Dragoon and Chiricahua mountains -- two of the region's renowned "sky islands." There, shady campsites offer easy access to ridgeline hikes, fishing holes and some serious relaxation.

Something is up with Peet. The minivan-driving corporate marketer I know from back home in suburban Philadelphia has gone cowboy. He's hotfooting our sport ute/pickup along a dirt track in the San Rafael Valley of southeast Arizona, straw Stetson tilted back. The man hasn't bathed in days; he's been tossing empties into the back of our 2007 Ford Explorer Sport Trac (Squirt soda, not Bud, but still ...), and now he's got the speedometer on our rig pushing 60. The corrugated road ahead rises sharply and then seemingly disappears into blue sky. Here we go again.

Murray Peet is an otherwise ambitious guy with lots to juggle--marriage, kids, a big renovation on his house--but none of this is on display during our meandering four-day, 700-mile adventure, which has us kicking up clouds of Sonoran Desert dust by day and camping on top of cool, spruce-capped mountains by night. Rounding out our two-truck convoy is a Dodge Dakota Quad Cab carrying fellow adventurers: Montana-based photographer Andrew Geiger and his assistant, Jonah Sutherland.

Our concept is simple: Load the pickups with camping gear, select a corner of the great Southwest where dotted gray lines (dirt roads) on the map outnumber solid red ones (paved), then see what happens. Every morning we spread out the map and find a route with the potential to test trucks and men. Every evening, we claim a primitive campsite, getting as close to a wilderness experience as you possibly can while equipped with a pickup and a cooler full of steak and beer.

Southeast Arizona is the perfect match for our game plan. It's a mythic landscape. The last sanctuary of Geronimo and Cochise, and the location for classic HollyÂ­wood westerns, it's shot through with a chain of mountains--"sky islands"--that thrust a vertical mile or more above a sea of cactus desert and grasslands.

Now, I've spent some time in the outdoors. I've climbed Mount Rainier, backpacked through national parks and kayaked the coast of Maine. But there's something about enjoying the great outdoors from behind the wheel of an American icon--the pickup. It takes a lot less sweat, plus I can haul as much gear as I want.

ROAD RULE #1: UNPACK NEW GEAR AT HOME

The first sign you've entered the sky island archipelago comes about 170 miles southeast of Phoenix, where Interstate 10 starts to climb through Texas Canyon into the Dragoon Mountains. Rounded boulders and pillars of bulbous granite crowd the highway. The haze of the low-desert urban sprawl slips away and, suddenly, every blade on every agave leaps out in hi-def.

At this morning's map reading, we liked the look of a campground in Chiricahua National Monument, a 12,000-acre sculpture garden of stone formations resembling an army of giant Michelin men. Highway 186, a two-lane, swerves in and out of the monuÂ­ment's ravines, snapping me out of the stupor induced by I-10. For the first time since picking up the Sport Trac, I detect a throaty rumble coming from beneath the hood.

Ahead, the scenery is cinematic. The setting sun spotlights in gold every cottonwood tree and windmill that pokes above the darkening prairie, and a hint of alpenglow bathes the wall of peaks to my left. Back home this morning, the view from my bedroom window extended a block. Now I'm admiring mountains 40 miles away.

We can afford to be picky at shady Bonita Canyon Campground; only a handful of the 22 campsites are occupied. While the rest of us wrestle with the tents and prepare dinner, Peet drives off to scavenge firewood. We'll grill steaks and brown garlic bread over the fire; I'll cook the noodles Alfredo and sauté veggies in garlic and olive oil on the stove. Roughing it, truck-camping style.

When a ranger comes by, I feel a bit shamefaced. Not about the beer hidden by my feet, but about our gleaming rides. "So you bought brand-new trucks and loaded 'em with camping gear that's still in boxes?" he asks me. He doesn't say another word, but I can read his mind like a cartoon thought bubble: "Poseurs." I don't try to explain. The ranger just shakes his head and continues his rounds.

ROAD RULE #2: BEWARE THE BEARS

Dust plumes trail the pickups as we bomb along Tanque Road north of Willcox and I-10, heading toward the Whitlock Mountains. It must be a trick played by the clear desert air, but the mountains appear to recede the farther we drive. This morning, over cereal and thick, cowboy-style coffee--we blew a gasket on our French press--we debated the day's itinerary and settled on a mission to find sand dunes and hot springs in this giant Bureau of Land Management parcel crisscrossed with axle-snapping tracks.

In the next 40 miles we count one roadrunner, several dust devils and one other vehicle. Oddly, it's towing a speedboat. Inside the Sport Trac, a film of dust settles on everything, but the road's washboard surface and cattle-guard crossings barely register. Growing confident in the truck's abilities, I slalom up an arroyo thick with sand. It feels like powder skiing. I'm pumped, but Peet's unimpressed. "You drive like my grandma. My turn," he says. He revs the engine and we fly.

We nearly miss Hot Well Dunes Recreation Area, an ORV (off-road vehicle) fun land that's not on our map. So we shift into 4wd Low and claw our way up a short trail that drops into the dunes, a white sea of sand covered in creosote bushes taller than our cab. Wheeling through the dunes takes some tire speed--so we gun it. It's nuts, like racing go-karts through a grocery store. What fun.

The camping dart we tossed at the map this morning--figuratively speaking--landed on Riggs Flat Lake Campground in Coronado National Forest, high up among the pines in the 10,720-ft. Pinaleño Mountains. It's the highest of Arizona's sky islands. The only way up to the lakeside retreat is the 35-mile Swift Trail Highway, which gains altitude through dozens of hairpin switchbacks. With every thousand feet we rise, the temperature drops another 5 degrees. Shrubs give way to spindly pines, then eventually to a forest of aspen, spruce and ponderosa pine. The light is fading fast when we reach the end of the dirt road at Riggs Flat Lake. Meadows line the shore and feeding trout dimple the surface. On the way up I fantasized about jumping into the water to wash away two days' dust. Now I'm more interested in finding my fleece jacket.

We're alone at the lake except for a fisherman casting a fly line. He soon approaches and introduces himself as Carl, the campground caretaker. The lanky retiree lives atop the Pinaleño in a small, disheveled RV from April until November. He's either very friendly or starved for human interaction. "Welcome to the biggest, baddest mountain in Arizona. So how'd you boys end up here?" he asks. "People from Arizona don't even know about it."

We chat with Carl a bit about Cochise, the 14th Cavalry and the concentration of bears in the Pinaleño (it's one of the densest in the Southwest), then bid him good night. Once the campfire's going, we draw our mesh chairs closer to the blaze for warmth in the chill mountain air. When the coals are glowing, I slap thin cuts of rib eye on the grill; Peet's practically salivating as the steaks sizzle. His wife's a vegetarian, which means he sees a lot more beans than beef in his household. "Meat three days in a row. Now this is road tripping!" he says. The rest of us are thinking how good our dinner must smell to the bears.

ROAD RULE #3: AVOID DECENT PLUMBING

A long, nasty approach road. No running water. A latrine. Identify those attributes in a campsite and you're guaranteed plenty of elbow room. Ramsey Vista Campground, which sits in the Huachuca Mountains west of Sierra Vista, meets all these criteria and is, therefore, de-serted. The approach is Carr Canyon Road, a ragged, slitherÂ­ing byway deeply rutted by rain. The Sport Trac spews stones and gravel as it claws grades in excess of 10 percent.

A string of switchbacks brings us to an especially dicey section, where the road dances above a band of cliffs. The already narrow roadbed is further constricted by fallen boulders. Peet breezes through while I look out the passenger window at 1000 ft. of free fall. "Uh, scoot over a bit, will you?" I ask him.

Ramsey Vista Campground puts us squarely in truck-camping heaven. From a hammock strung between ponderosa pines, I view 9230-ft. Carr Peak. I contemplate a sprint up the trail to the top, but we've got a fire going and the cooler is full of cold ones. MaÃ±ana.

The next morning, we wolf down egg burritos, then make our way down from our sky island refuge. The smooth dirt road is perfect for Peet to kick up some dust again. He puts the pedal down and drifts the nimble Ford through a few hairpins and--just for the briefest moment--catches a few inches of daylight beneath our tires thanks to a perfectly pitched washout in the road. Our plan to jump westward over the Huachuca Mountains along the Mexico border is foiled when we encounter a road closure sign on Montezuma Canyon Road.

"Couldn't we just slip through and four-wheel it?" Peet asks the ranger behind the counter at Coronado National Memorial, the turnaround point.

"You could, except there's a 20-ft.-thick layer of rocks and boulders across the road," she says.

The Sport Trac's good, but not that good, so we have to detour 35 miles to the north. But by the cosmic force that governs all serendipitous road trips, the rerouting turns into a lucky break. We're soon traveling south toward Parker Canyon Lake on State Route 83, a sinuous two-lane blacktop that's pure driving pleasure. The road hugs a ridgeline and passes verdant ranches nestled against the massive Huachucas. The windows are down, the temperature is 79 degrees, and somewhere way down in Mexico a thunderhead is letting loose.

We leave the pavement behind and drive what we think is Parker Canyon Road through open rangeland to the San Rafael Valley. There's no way to know for certain. No signs mark the way and there isn't a soul around to ask. It will be hours before we see another vehicle. Once again Peet draws the ace and gets dibs on negotiating the truck down several rocky hillsides before splashing through stream crossings. I'm stuck jumping out to hold open fence gates.

"This road's one step up from a horse trail," Peet says with a big grin.

With brassy Mexican country music on the dial and the vault of a clear Arizona sky overhead, neither of us is much concerned. We're living on road rules: There are no wrong turns, and you can't really get lost if there's nowhere you need to be.

Think of this as the starter kit for a whole new level of campsite comfort. With a truck, there's no need to huddle in the dirt by a tiny backpacking stove. Just pull a folding camp chair up next to the cooler and throw some steaks on the grill. Go ahead, we won't tell.